Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in the background section of the instant application are not prior art to the claims in the application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in the background section.
Baluns are electrical transformers that convert electrical signals that are balanced about ground to electrical signals that are unbalanced about ground. Baluns may also convert electrical signals that are unbalanced about ground and convert the electrical signals to being balanced about ground.
A balun typically includes two inductors where each inductor is formed from a set of wound conductors. The sets of wound conductors are inductively coupled if current is passed through one set of wound conductors. FIG. 1 is a simplified schematic of a traditional balun 100. Balun 100 includes a first set of wound conductors 105 and a second set of wound conductors 110. One wound conductor from each set of wound conductors 105 and 110 is shown in FIG. 1 for simplification. Each wound conductor in the set of wound conductors 105 may be adjacent to a wound conductor in the set of wound conductors 110. Traditional baluns typically tend to introduce a relatively large amount of cross talk (i.e., interference) with nearby circuits, such as other inductors, other baluns, and the like.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide new baluns having relatively lower cross talk than traditional baluns and having smaller areas than traditional baluns while providing the same efficiency.